CVE-2019-13103 Siemens CVE debrief

Who should care

Embedded device vendors, OEM firmware teams, and security engineers responsible for U-Boot-based boot chains should prioritize this issue, especially where the bootloader may parse partition tables from untrusted or externally supplied storage.

Technical summary

The supplied NVD data describes a CWE-674 uncontrolled recursion issue in Denx U-Boot. A crafted self-referential DOS partition table can cause the parser to recurse indefinitely during boot-time processing, leading to stack exhaustion and potential memory corruption. The affected scope in the corpus includes U-Boot versions through 2019.07-rc4, including the 2019.04 release line and the 2019.07 release candidates rc1 through rc4. The CVSS vector provided by NVD is CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H.

Defensive priority

High for any fleet using affected U-Boot builds. Prioritize systems that boot from media or images whose partition tables may not be fully trusted, because the impact is boot failure and possible data corruption in a privileged early-boot component.

Recommended defensive actions

• Inventory all products and firmware images that embed U-Boot, and confirm whether they use versions in the affected range listed by NVD.
• Apply the vendor/U-Boot patch referenced in the mailing list and commit-history links, and move affected deployments to a non-vulnerable release.
• Treat DOS partition-table parsing as untrusted input; add or verify recursion-depth limits and cycle detection in any downstream forks or board-specific modifications.
• Test boot paths in staging with malformed partition-table handling to confirm the device fails safely instead of recursing indefinitely.
• Monitor for boot failures, watchdog resets, or unexpected early-boot crashes on devices that may encounter crafted storage media or images.
• Use the Siemens advisories and U-Boot mailing-list discussion as remediation references when coordinating fixes across vendors and downstream integrators.

Evidence notes

The supplied corpus shows CVE publication on 2019-07-29 and later record modification on 2026-05-12; the modification date is NVD record maintenance, not the vulnerability issue date. NVD identifies the weakness as CWE-674 and provides the CVSS 3.1 vector AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H. The affected CPE criteria in the corpus cover U-Boot through 2019.07-rc4. Patch/advisory references include Siemens advisories, the U-Boot mailing-list thread, and U-Boot commit history.

Sources and references

Methodology and review provenance

AI-assisted synthesis based on stored public vulnerability evidence. System validation, approval state, and publication status do not by themselves establish human review of this revision. PatchSiren helps prioritize defensive review and does not prove exposure or remediation on any system.